Spring has sprung, and Peter Cottontail brings with him Easter – the official end of the holiday season. That’s right, the “holiday season” is actually from Halloween until Easter. True, we don’t have the social obligations and lavish feasts that mark November and December, but the grocery store aisles have chocolate and candy displays from Labor Day (the beginning of the Halloween candy) until Easter. And noting the chocolate bunnies and crème eggs, I realized I’d never questioned this obvious inconsistency before: bunnies don’t lay eggs – why don’t we have an Easter Chicken?
So I did a little digging and discovered some very interesting things. In current times, Easter represents the resurrection of Christ, and for some Christians it’s arguably the most Holy day of the year. But what does that have to do with bunnies and eggs? And why does the day change? Whether or not you believe that Christ was actually born on December 25th, Christmas is the same day every year – but not Easter.
Surprisingly, the day for Easter is determined a very esoteric way. It is always the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox. And because the moon cycles vary, sometimes Easter is in late March and sometimes it’s in late April. This tidbit is less surprising when we realize that pre-Christian pagan cultures already had spring time festivals celebrating the return of the sun, fertility and growth – with perhaps the two greatest symbols of fertility, the rabbit and the egg.
So what’s the point of all of this? Well, I guess the point is that it doesn’t matter. Easter is my favorite holiday. Seeing the pastel colors in the grocery store displays makes me happy. I get giddy shopping for chocolate bunnies and peanut butter eggs to fill Easter baskets. I love the idea of resurrection, rebirth and renewed hope.
Everything I love about Easter is a hodgepodge of various cultures and beliefs – no one has to be “right” and it can all work together for me. It’s the same with sustainable weight-loss. There are many different weight-loss “cultures” – the extreme body boot camp crowd, the whole foods natural living crowd, the food combining and supplement crowd, the extreme control and calorie counting crowd – and no single one has to be “right.”
For sustainable results, what’s critical is that the various approaches and practices resonate with who you are at the deepest core of your being. It doesn’t have to be a single “right” approach. Just like Easter, it can be a hodgepodge. And when your practices are aligned with your principles, you become happy. And you too, are ready to hop down that bunny trail.